Baby Food Jihad

Baby formula is vital to an infant's health, as it contains the nutrients necessary for proper physical and mental development. Some baby food, though, while being healthy for babies, is associated with terrorism and bigotry.

For Orthodox Jews and others, the baby formula that their children consume needs to conform to kosher dietary laws, meaning that the food excludes ingredients that would render it religiously inedible. A hechsher or kashruth symbol is placed on a number of products to let those concerned know that they are okay to eat. The most prominent hechsher found on U.S. baby food is the "U" with an "O" around it, the symbol of the group Orthodox Union.

Recently, the Muslim community has gotten into the act, creating a market for Islamic halal (permissible) food, as they too have restrictions regarding food consumption – halal being the Muslim equivalent of kosher. This, though, seems to be more about something other than religious duty, as Jewish dietary laws are more stringent than Muslim ones, rendering kosher food perfectly acceptable to Muslims and halal food entirely unnecessary.